the tindog coffeehouse

Like a lot kids, I grew up without a father around. My parents divorced when I was six, and my dad moved out of town for work a couple of years later. I still kept in touch with him as I grew up, but it was hard not having him in my day-to-day life. I’ve struggled most of my life to figure out what it takes to be a man, what it means to be a husband and a father. And I think it’s fair to say that at some point in his life, every man wrestles with those same questions, wondering whether he’s good enough or strong enough or smart enough or whatever. The problem is, we don’t really have a good way to determine that.

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On top, the Microsoft Kin, a “social media phone for teens”. Below that, a fancy phone used by evil organization “The Ring” on NBC’s Chuck.

Insert your own Microsoft jokes here.

Previously:
Where have I seen this before?

It’s safe to say that there will be two groups of people who watched last night’s epic finale of Lost: those who are angry because they didn’t understand the ending or because it didn’t end the way they wanted it to, and those who have a soul. I’m kidding. Sorta.

Personally, I thought it was a perfect conclusion to what has been an obsession for so many people for six years, a final chapter that was full of heartbreak, renewed hope, and ultimate redemption. It was necessarily explosive at times but beautifully tender and poignant in its closing moments. This story that began with Jack opening his eyes in the middle of the jungle ended with him closing them in the middle of the jungle. But as the Sideways storyline so masterfully reminded us, that wasn’t really the end. Instead, the reunited castaways, lost no longer, would make their final journey together.

A happy ending? I say yes. But bittersweet? Absolutely.

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Since the beginning of the season, I’ve been doing these weekly blog posts about the previous night’s episode of Lost, usually as a somewhat-random, somewhat-organized list of bullet points. But seeing as this is the last post before the series finale (about which I’m still in denial), I wanted to do something a little different this week. With only two and a half hours left until the end, there’s less of a need to theorize and more of a need to understand how all the pieces fit together. Less of a need to guess the final scene and more of a need to put everything in its proper context.

Last week’s episode, “Across The Sea”, was myth-heavy and controversial, probably one of the most controversial in the whole six-season run of the show. But as I thought my way through it the next day, I wasn’t as concerned about the minutiae of it (how the people figured out the secret of the donkey wheel, whether the producers should’ve shown the Season 1 flashbacks, etc.) but rather the larger overarching themes of the series and how the story of these two mythic brothers and their adopted mother fit into them, themes such as good vs. evil, free will vs. determinism, and science vs. faith.

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I’ve had my iPhone for about 10 months, and almost since Day 1 I’ve used a Mophie Juice Pack Air to provide both protection for it as well as extra battery life. For the most part, I’ve been pretty happy with it, even though it was expensive and even though it added a lot of extra bulk to the phone.

While some people had complained that the Juice Packs negatively impact cellular reception, I had never really thought about until yesterday. We were waiting for church to start and I wanted to check something online really quick, but I couldn’t get a signal. Just one row in front of me, however, another guy was happily browsing on his iPhone with a full 3G connection. The only difference? He only had a standard plastic case on his phone.

Curious, I ran some network speed tests later from my kitchen, home office, and bedroom — three places where I’ve gotten historically bad reception. In two of those tests (the office and bedroom), I couldn’t get a 3G signal at all and could just barely get an Edge connection. I then took the Juice Pack off and ran the same tests. The kitchen test was a little slower, but the others were much faster. Needless to say, I was shocked at how big of a difference removing the Juice Pack made.

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